"More desired than our owne salvation" : the roots of American Christian affinity for the State of Israel.
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation seeks to show that popular American affinity for the State of Israel draws from the taproot of apocalyptic hope informing American identity and national vocation from the revolutionary era to the present. The English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation informing these American adaptations of apocalyptic hope was first developed in the early Elizabethan period and refined through the first half of the seventeenth century. Brought to North America by English colonists with Puritan commitments, the tradition provided a foundational framework for American self-understanding. Given this Judeo-centric tradition's direct contribution to American popular Christianity and civil religion—through varying degrees of national-covenantalism, premillennial dispensationalism and cultural fundamentalism—claims that American popular affinity for the State of Israel is generated primarily by external manipulations or lobbies strain the bounds of credulity. Grounded, in part, in the Protestant historiography developed by Lutheran and Calvinist reformers, this English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation was from its inception a political theology. The tradition openly constructed friends (Jews) as well as enemies (Muslims and Roman Catholics), while cultivating an occidentocentric discourse that discounted Eastern Christians. The tradition's most visible and direct impulses are manifested in Christian Zionism, understood as political action, informed by specifically Christian commitments, to promote or preserve Jewish control over the geographic area now containing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The conviction that Jews had a central role to play in God's end-times drama led English and Anglo-American interpreters to construct Jews as allies while constructing Catholics and Muslims as Antichrist. Despite the banishment of Jews from England, Judeo-centric content became common within English Protestan…
abstract: This dissertation seeks to show that popular American affinity for the State of Israel draws from the taproot of apocalyptic hope informing American identity and national vocation from the revolutionary era to the present. The English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation informing these American adaptations of apocalyptic hope was first developed in the early Elizabethan period and refined through the first half of the seventeenth century. Brought to North America by English colonists with Puritan commitments, the tradition provided a foundational framework for American self-understanding. Given this Judeo-centric tradition's direct contribution to American popular Christianity and civil religion—through varying degrees of national-covenantalism, premillennial dispensationalism and cultural fundamentalism—claims that American popular affinity for the State of Israel is generated primarily by external manipulations or lobbies strain the bounds of credulity. Grounded, in part, in the Protestant historiography developed by Lutheran and Calvinist reformers, this English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation was from its inception a political theology. The tradition openly constructed friends (Jews) as well as enemies (Muslims and Roman Catholics), while cultivating an occidentocentric discourse that discounted Eastern Christians. The tradition's most visible and direct impulses are manifested in Christian Zionism, understood as political action, informed by specifically Christian commitments, to promote or preserve Jewish control over the geographic area now containing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The conviction that Jews had a central role to play in God's end-times drama led English and Anglo-American interpreters to construct Jews as allies while constructing Catholics and Muslims as Antichrist. Despite the banishment of Jews from England, Judeo-centric content became common within English Protestan…
author: Smith, Robert O. (Robert Owen), 1974-
language: en
keywords: Christian Zionism., English Reformation eschatology., American nationalism., Jewish-Christian relations., Muslim-Christian relations.
date published: 2010-12
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:52Z
provider: Baylor University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Baylor University.

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2104/8100